The welded joins inside Darwin’s oil-storage tunnels needed attention before they could hold aviation fuel. The tunnel museum’s history credits two-pack paint applied along those joins with making the later storage work.[1]
The tunnels had been intended to protect fuel after Japanese air raids destroyed above-ground supplies in 1942. But persistent water leakage complicated construction, and the completed tunnels held no oil during the Second World War.[1]
Where is this place?
WWII Oil Storage Tunnels, Darwin. This map locates the town or region, not a verified exact historic event site.
That did not mean they never held fuel. A 2014 environmental audit prepared for the Northern Territory Government records that tunnels 5 and 6 stored jet fuel for three years from 1955. The account appears in its review of earlier uses around Kitchener Drive, beside Darwin’s waterfront.[2]
Water was still conspicuous when ABC reporter Jesse Thompson went underground in 2018. He described it trickling through the tunnels despite months without rain; tour operator Robert Marchant told him it was natural water that builders had struggled to stop. The same report noted a smaller find from cleaning the tunnels: a no-smoking sign near a former oil-storage area.[3]